Placet! Students often forget--including this writer--that the taxonomy of linguistic pheomena is imposed by shcolars. But language does not fit so neatly into our categories. I have learned much about English from international students and the questions they ask: What is the difference between drinking something up and drinking it down [since up and down are are opposites]? Why is English so impolite? The sign says "Park," giving an order. But I don't want to park. I find the taxonomy of adverbial participles in ancient Greek a good example of this. "Attendant circumstance" really is a wastebasket for all uses of the participle that cannot be otherwise accounted for. [Rcall that Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that the rule never to end a sentence with a preposition was "a silly rule, with with which he would not put."] Oh well. Incipient Old Age may make onw a curmudgeon, also in res grammaticae. >How about theory vs. practice? While grammar can be taken to very >strict limits with rules an theories, often its implementation at the >user level is less accurately implemented than what we learn from our >text books. I have encountered this many times as military field >linguist. For those who are students and professors of Greek, continue >the good job with these discussions, but don't forget that human >language is not rigid, but flexible. We do not with absolutes all the >time, but probablies, and possiblies, etc. > >Larry A. Hartman >Defense Language Institute Alumnus >Department of Arabic Studies Edgar Krentz, Prof. of New Testament Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago 1100 EAST 55TH STREET CHICAGO, IL 60615 Tel: [773] 256-0752; (H) [773] 947-8105 Reply to: FFFF,0000,0000ekrentz@lstc.edu (office) orFFFF,0000,0000 emkrentz@mcs.com (home)